The Power of Web Push Notifications Over Emails

Web push notifications have become the most powerful and easy medium of communication. They are widely used by marketers to convey messages to users instantly.

Earlier on, people depended on emails and it was the most common medium used vigorously for communication. With time, web push notifications became the winner and emails just became an option among communication channels.

Web push notifications have many advantages over emails. Research shows that push notifications deliver 10X more CTR than emails. Also, they increase CTR, customer engagement, offer a high level of privacy on your details and deliver the messages in real time.

The opt-in rate for push notification is up to 20% while for emails it is 10% maximum. As for CTR, for push notifications it is up to 40% and for emails it is a mere 4.5%.

Web push notifications are used by various industries to increase their sales and revenue and to reach out to their customers more effectively. Let’s see how various industries use web push notifications.

How eCommerce uses them

The overall usage of web push notifications by the eCommerce industry is 21%. Considering the various categories in eCommerce, we find that the fashion category uses it extensively and comes to nearly 70% of the total communication channels used.

eCommerce platforms use web push notifications as follows:

48% for discounts & sales

19% for shopping cart products

13% for delivery updates

10% for upselling

8% for back in stock

3% for abandoned cart

How media/blogs use them

The overall usage of web push notifications by Media/Blog is 18%. Of the total, 44% (which is the highest percentage) is sent for alerting users with breaking news.

Prime uses of web push notifications (industry-wise)

Web push notifications have become the main mode of communication by marketers and you will see why from the data below, which showcases their multiple uses and benefits. Very importantly, they can be used for improving businesses’ revenue and sales.

Here’s the data, broken down by industry type:

Uses for eCommerce

eCommerce is one such industry that uses web push notifications extensively.

Push notifications can be used in eCommerce communication with customers and subscribers for a variety of purposes, including:

Price drop alert

Delivery status

New product launch

Time bound sale

Exclusive coupons

Abandoned cart product reminder

Uses for media/blog

Media and the blogging industry use web push notifications on a higher scale. We did see earlier that the percentage use of web push notifications in this industry is 18%.

The prime uses of web push notifications in media/blog are:

Breaking news

New post alert

New site launch alert

Uses for SAAS

SAAS too uses push notifications for some of its needs. Prime usages for them in an SAAS company are the following:

New product launch

Upgrade alerts

New releases

Uses for the travel industry

In the travel industry, web push notifications can be very useful in communicating offers to interested audiences.

The major uses include:

Alerting users on price drops

Arrival alerts

Departure alerts

Check-in alerts

Benefits of web push notifications

We have seen so far that using web push notifications has without a doubt many benefits. Various industries and categories among them use this method for reaching out to their users and to boosting customer engagement. It has been seen that 30% of engagement comes from mobile and 70% of engagement comes from desktop.

Apart from the increased engagement, other benefits include the below:

Increased CTR

Usage of web push notifications increased the rate of CTR for industries like eCommerce, gambling, and finance. The CTR increase in each of these industries is as follows:

eCommerce – 30%

Gambling – 15%

Finance – 10%

Increase in sales

It has been shown that using web push notifications increased sales numbers for certain categories. Segmentation played a crucial role in this area and gained 54% increase in sales. eCommerce was able to reap a 50% increase in sales for sending web push notifications on exclusive offers. A 15% increase in sales was witnessed for broadcast messages.

Increase in subscribers

Using web push notifications increased the rate of subscription rate of various platforms. This is mainly because it could reach users at the right time, thus converting them more easily. The subscription rate did increase for the following platforms as follows:

eCommerce – 5%-10%

Gambling – 20%

Finance – 15%

The impact of using segmentation and large images in web push notifications

PushEngage, one of the best web push notification services, conducted a study on the effect of push notifications using segmentation on CTR. The results, though positive, were different for each type of industry.

Media/Blog saw an increase in CTR by a whopping 218% using segmentation while sending push notifications. This means the CTR increased 2X times when push notifications were sent.

Again, PushEngage studied the impact of large images in web push notifications where the CTR increased 63%. This too depended on the type of industry. For some industries it gave negative CTR, while for some it was boosted.

Advantages of using web push notifications

There are many advantages of using web push notifications. The prime ones are:

Easy subscription

Saves time

Real time delivery

Privacy

Things to consider while sending web push notifications

Before sending web push notifications, it is important that you ensure the notification will get you the desired result. There are a few things that you should be taking into consideration:

Frequency of the publishing

Time zone of the subscribers

Right segmentation

Setting expiry date for notification

So there you have it. Using push notifications definitely brings a lot of benefits such as increased CTR or sales, but you need to adapt your strategy to your industry and how your particular audience reacts.

Note: The opinions expressed in this article are the views of the author, and not necessarily the views of Caphyon, its staff, or its partners.